“Let’s go out tonight, I’m so fed up of Barney’s whining, a tiny spill and he acts like the world’s ending, I mean grow up already,” Robin says nonchalantly.

Lily gives her a scolding ‘Barney is dying how can you be so callous’ look but it quickly shifts into a sympathetic one that says ‘your husband is dying and I understand that this is the way you’re dealing.’ Robin just sighs, she was always going to tell the others the truth and this seems as good a time as any.

“Lily, I have something to tell you,” Robin says seriously.

“You can tell me anything,” Lily replies, expression warm with an undercurrent of hoping to be helpful.

“Barney’s not dying.”

“Of course he’s not,” says Lily gently, clearly indulging her denial.

“I’m serious Lily, he’s faking it, it’s all part of one of his convoluted plans,” Robin states.

Robin thinks for a moment, Barney will be a sulky nightmare if he discovers she ruined his plans.

“Barney can’t know that I told you,” Robin insists.

“He’s going to find out.”

“But this was in our pre-nup, it’s important.”

“You signed a pre-nup? You signed a pre-nup promising to keep each other’s deranged secrets?”

“No I signed a pre-nup promising not to reveal the details of any revenge mission related to the Marinara sauce incident. I didn’t think it could be this big of a deal at the time.”

“Marinara sauce incident?”

“Yeah, apparently Marshall once pointed out that Barney had a drop of Marinara sauce on his tie, and Barney felt this humiliated him, and has been trying to find the perfect way to get Marshall to spray himself with Marinara sauce ever since.”

“You’re only making me more certain of the need to confiscate his suits. Besides, the pre-nup hardly matters, you two are never getting divorced.”

“That’s not the point, the lies we tell together are the foundations of our relationship, and you can’t give me away.”

“Really, that’s the story you’re going with?”

“Yeah okay, so it’s a little weak. How about this, if we go along with Barney’s façade, you can dole out a punishment that’s even better. I have an idea.”

***

Robin enters her and Barney’s home, nodding at the carer who’s leaving. The woman just gives her a dirty look; thinks she’s a bad wife for not taking any time off work when her husband’s dying.

“Do we really need to be paying for a carer?” Robin asks yet again.

“I can’t get out of bed Robin, anything could happen,” Barney chastises, proceeding to regale her with a scenario where his feet land on the floor and a camera crew enter the apartment by descending through the sky-light, catching him out.

Robin smirks, climbing into bed next to him, by now naturally manoeuvring around the wires.

“You’re an idiot,” she says fondly.

***

Lily tells Marshall, and Marshall tells Ted. Robin doesn’t ask how the conversations went, but everyone has agreed to keep up the pretence for the opportunity of pay back.

“He spent weeks testing the blast radius, making sure the splatter would only hit Marshall and no one else,” Robin tells them.

“How is he even going to control where everyone is,” Marshall asks.

“He’s Barney,” everyone, including Marshall, says a moment later.

“So we use his own ploy against him, hand it back at the last minute,” Ted says re-iterating the plan.

“Then the meatball sub explodes in Barney’s face,” Lily says.

“I have a better idea. If we let him think he’s won, he’ll have so much further to fall,” Robin suggests, partly because she’s willing to indulge Barney and give him at least a moment of success, and partly because she likes the evilness of taking it away after that moment.

“Victory will taste all the sweeter,” Ted chuckles, “get it? Taste all the sweeter.”

Everyone else rolls their eyes.

“So first we let the sub explode in Marshall’s face…”

“Cool,” Marshall replies, and at the others’ surprise adds, “it sounds like fun, I’ve always wanted to be in La Tomatina.”

“It’s going to be hard to ‘accidentally’ get some on Barney, he’s made his plan intricate,” she tells Marshall.

“I’ll plant a drop of Marinara sauce on him when he’s focused on Marshall,” Lily says.

“So that leaves me as the one who gets to point out that he has a drop of Marinara sauce on his silk pyjamas,” Ted says smugly.